Clowning Around
by sasha1600
Summary: Katie’s a bit too clever for her own good. Set in the ‘Future Perfect’ universe. Warnings: corporal punishment of a child; contains clowns.
1. Chapter 1

**Clowning Around**

**Summary:** Katie's a bit too clever for her own good. Set in the 'Future Perfect' universe. **Warnings:** corporal punishment of a child; contains clowns.

**Disclaimer:** Caitlyn and Leigh are mine; the rest belong to other people.

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A/N: This takes place in the 'Future Perfect' universe, which features Caitlyn and Leigh, the twin daughters of Tim and Abby. **This story contains references to the corporal punishment of a child. If you have a problem with that, click on that 'back' button now. You've been warned.**

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'DADDY!'

Hearing the blood-curdling shriek, Tim dropped the laundry he was sorting and ran towards his daughters' room, his heart pounding and his hand moving unconsciously towards his left hip even though his gun was safely locked away.

Katie was still at school, at her science club meeting, and he'd just sent Leigh to get changed and started on her homework. What on earth could have his fearless tomboy daughter so upset?

He found her standing in the doorway of the bedroom, still wearing her school uniform, her eyes flashing with fury. Glancing over her head, he immediately saw what was wrong.

On Katie's bed, propped up against the pillow where an aged teddy normally sat, was a clown.

Or, rather, a doll dressed in a spotted jumpsuit, whose face had been literally painted to resemble a classic white-faced mime.

'It's ok. I've got it,' Tim reassured Leigh, ruffling her hair. He didn't really understand why Leigh found clowns so disturbing, but even he had to admit that Katie's version was a little creepy. He'd have to have a little chat with her when she got home about deliberately tormenting her sister, especially since she'd clearly put some effort into it.

'It _talks_, Daddy!' Leigh warned as he stepped past her into the room to remove the doll. Taking a closer look, Tim recognised Katie's old 'Babbling Betty' doll under the paint – if you poked it in the chest, its mouth would open and shut and a small recorder imbedded somewhere inside it would play one of several phrases. He smiled, impressed that Leigh had gotten close enough to the clown to set it off.

He was halfway to the bed when it started laughing.

Tim froze, staring at the cackling doll in astonishment. _What the hell?!_ After a few seconds it stopped laughing and he took a slow step towards it.

'Hello, Leigh!' the doll said.

Tim was speechless. He had no idea how Kate had managed to reprogram the doll's verbal repertoire, but she clearly had. And she'd somehow made the wretched thing motion-sensitive as well. For a kid not yet in high school, that was pretty remarkable. If she hadn't been using it to screw with her sister's head, he'd have been damn impressed.

Tim snatched the doll from Kate's bed and tucked it under one arm as he turned to leave. Leigh took a step back from the doorway to let him and the clown pass.

'I'm _watching_ you, Leigh!'

_Right, that's it!_

Tim flipped the doll over and yanked the batteries out angrily.

'Is it dead?' Leigh asked in a small voice.

'Yes,' he assured her, holding up the batteries to show her.

She still eyed it warily as he carried it out of her room. She quickly traded places with him, ducking into the bedroom and shutting the door as soon as the clown was safely in the hallway. Tim finally let himself smile at the absurdity of the scenario.

A moment later, the smile faded.

Taking a closer look at the doll, he could see that one of its eyes had been removed and replaced with a small motion detector. He flipped the doll over, taking in the neat incision in the back of its head that had made the substitution possible. A little prodding revealed a small digital voice recorder tucked inside the head as well. Fairly sophisticated wiring connected both to the doll's batteries and speaker.

But Tim's pride that his precocious electronics wizard had managed such a feat was outweighed by his anger as he recognised the new components as part of the standard NCIS surveillance kit. A few minutes later, a quick survey confirmed that a number of items were indeed missing from the tote-bag that he kept at home in case of late-night emergency call-outs.

Not messing with his and Abby's work things was one of the basic rules of the household, and it had been years since he'd had to remind the twins that NCIS gear was off-limits. He was meticulous about locking up his weapon, of course, but they didn't necessarily keep harmless things like reports or binoculars under lock and key. But that didn't mean they were unimportant, and the girls knew to leave them alone.

He was frankly astonished that Katie had taken the devices. Outright disobedience was unusual for her, and this was definitely one of the worst offences either of the girls had committed.

And yet, a part of him regretted that he had to punish her for something that was so clever. He didn't want to discourage her from pursuing her technological interests.

Still, there was no doubt in his mind how he had to deal with her behaviour. Taking the equipment, plus the deliberate cruelty to her sister, added up to big trouble for Caitlyn McGee, regardless of how impressive her creation was.

Hearing Abby's car turn into the driveway, Tim headed towards the front hall.


	2. Chapter 2

Katie pushed open the front door and bounced into the hallway, already chattering excitedly.

'Daddy! Mr. Barkley showed us the coolest computer program today! It... oh, crap!'

Her father was sitting on the staircase, a clown doll on his knee, one hand covering its eyes.

'Tim? What's wrong?'

Abby nudged her daughter farther into the hallway so she could step inside herself, and shut the door. Then she turned back towards her husband, puzzled by the expression on his face. He didn't answer her, just removed his hand from the doll's face.

Abby frowned, now seeing more clearly that it had been painted to look like a clown. She turned angrily towards Katie. The movement was enough to start the doll talking again.

'You can't hide from me, Leigh! I can still see you!'

Abby's expression darkened as she realised the full extent of Katie's effort to torment Leigh.

'Caitlyn Jennifer McGee! How could you? She's your _sister_!'

Even though Kate knew she was in trouble, her instinct for self-preservation hadn't kicked in. Her voice dripping with sarcasm, she answered defiantly, 'It's not my fault that Leigh is such a baby that she's scared of _a__ doll!_'

Without warning, Abby reached out and swatted her, hard, across the backside.

'Don't you use that tone with me, young lady! And you _know_ how Leigh feels about _clowns_!'

Katie squawked and rubbed at her bottom. She took a step away from her mother even though that meant moving slightly closer to her father, who was once again removing the batteries from the doll.

'And you definitely know better than to take equipment from my work bag, Kate. It might have compromised an entire operation if I didn't know something was missing until I needed it.'

'She did _what?!_'

'I was gonna put it all back, Daddy! I just wanted to figure out how it works...'

'Then you should have asked.'

'You'd have said no!'

'Well, if you knew that, then you knew you should leave it alone!'

'But...'

'Wait for me in the office, Kate.'

'Daddy!'

Kate hadn't been in trouble very often, but she knew well enough that there usually wasn't much _talking_ involved in a trip to the home office her parents shared.

'Move it, Caitlyn.'

'But, Mama...'

'Now!'

Katie finally stopped talking and went, scuffing her feet along the carpet in silent protest.

Handing the doll to Abby, Tim grimly followed his daughter down the hall.


	3. Chapter 3

Leigh sat at her desk, working grumpily through a series of ridiculously easy math problems and trying not to think about the even more boring history homework that was still waiting for her. Her teachers seemed determined to waste her time, she thought, between the unchallenging busy-work and the useless lists of dates and dead people.

Suddenly, her head shot up in surprise at the unmistakeable sounds of her sister being spanked.

She'd expected Katie to get into trouble over her prank with the clown doll, but she hadn't thought that she'd be spanked for it. Daddy normally didn't spank them over their usual sisterly squabbling, unless they actually hit each other. He didn't spank them all that often, actually, generally saving it for the most serious misbehaviour, when it could send a particularly strong message.

And, judging by the sound of things, he wasn't just spanking her, he was spanking her _hard_. Of course, Katie always carried on like she was being murdered, shrieking like crazy, unlike Leigh who was the complete opposite, trying to take it without giving any outward sign of how much it hurt. She'd never yet managed to get through one of Uncle Gibbs's spankings without yelling and crying, but she'd come close to her stoic ideal a few times with Daddy. But, even by Kate's standards, she sounded pretty hysterical. Leigh winced in sympathy. She was still annoyed about the clown doll, but she didn't like hearing her twin crying in pain.

A few minutes later, the bedroom door opened and Katie sulked in and threw herself face-down on her bed, still sniffling. Leigh gave her a little while before trying to talk to her. Finally, her curiosity got the better of her.

'Katie? How'd you make it motion-sensitive?'

Leigh was nearly as good with technical things as her sister was, at least in theory. She didn't often have the patience for the fiddly details to make things work in practice, but she usually understood Katie's creations. This one was bugging her.

'Took a sensor from Daddy's work bag. It's supposed to make a surveillance camera start recording when there's someone in the room. Saves on battery power, not running all the time.'

Katie sounded vaguely smug about the explanation. Leigh stared at her in utter shock. Yes, it was clever... but it was also completely insane!

'Are you crazy?! Does Daddy _know_?!' she asked, incredulous.

'Whydya think I got spanked?' Katie muttered in reply.

'What were you _thinking?_ You didn't actually think you _wouldn't_ get a spanking for that, did you?'

'Wasn't really thinking about it. I wanted to see if I could make it work, was planning to put it all back before he found out... and then it did work, and...'

'And you couldn't resist trying it out?'

'Something like that. And then I remembered when Uncle Tony told us about that time when he put fake poison ivy in Uncle Gibbs's yard during his Memorial Day barbecue, to try to freak out Daddy, and I realised that Betty looked a bit like a clown anyway....'

'That was your problem, you know? If I hadn't screamed when I walked into the room, Daddy wouldn't've known...'

'Yeah, I figured that out.'

Leigh chuckled.

'A bit too late,' Katie added, rubbing at her butt.

Both girls were quiet for a while, and Leigh picked up her pencil to go back to her homework. Suddenly, she giggled.

'What?'

'Uncle Tony never told us what Uncle Gibbs said about the poison ivy thing...'

'Well, I'm pretty sure he didn't get spanked for it!'

Leigh laughed again at Katie's obvious statement. Everyone knew that grown-ups didn't get spanked. The girls had seen Uncle Gibbs smack Uncle Tony upside the head often enough, but of course he wouldn't actually _spank_ him. And Uncle Tony was family, closer even, in some ways, than Daddy's sister or Mama's brother, and Uncle Gibbs was an extra grandfather in all but blood, but it wasn't as if he actually was Daddy's and Uncle Tony's father. He hadn't even known them as children, so he wouldn't _ever_ have spanked them.

'Yeah, no kidding! But Uncle Gibbs probably made him do about a thousand push-ups or something. You know, the Marines thing...'

'Yeah!'

Both girls dissolved into giggles.

'Leigh?'

'Yeah?'

'I'm sorry I was so mean... with the doll.'

'Thanks. And it would've been pretty cool, if it wasn't a clown.'

'Yeah. I guess. So... what chapter do we have to read for history?'

'You're doing _history_ first?'

'It's easier to read lying down, than to do math lying down.'

'I guess... if you don't fall asleep from boredom!'

'Oh, no worries there... my butt will keep me awake!'


	4. Chapter 4

Tim stepped out of the elevator carrying a large cardboard box, and found Tony waiting. His old partner stuck his foot in the door to hold the elevator, and they chatted for a few minutes, catching up. Even though it had been years since they'd worked together on a regular basis, each of them now leading a team of his own, they were still close friends. But they had both been working cases and it had been nearly a week since they'd even run into each other in the office, much less got together for one of their regular dinners.

It was only as he turned to step into the elevator that Tony asked about the contents of the box.

'Oh. This. It's just a bunch of decommissioned and broken electronics from the storeroom. They never got around to throwing it out, so I asked the Director if I could take some of it home.'

'Planning a garage sale?'

Tim rolled his eyes.

'No. It's for Katie.'

He quickly filled Tony in about the clown doll incident. As angry as he was about her treatment of her sister and her blatant defiance of an inviolable rule she'd known since early childhood, he couldn't resist bragging about her precocious ability to jerry-rig something as technologically complex as the doll had been.

'Anyway, I thought she could cannibalise this stuff, figure out how things work...'

Tony looked at him sceptically.

'You know I don't know much about raising kids, but isn't rewarding bad behaviour supposed to be one of those things you _don't_ do?'

Tim laughed.

'Trust me, Tony, Katie doesn't feel _rewarded_ for what she did.'

'Been taking a page out of Gibbs's book, there, Probie?'

'Let's just say she isn't going to working on this stuff sitting down.'

It was Tony's turn to chuckle as he slapped Tim lightly on the shoulder.

'Oh, yeah, Probie. Spanking her even though you think she's a genius to pull it off? You definitely got that from Gibbs!'

The two men exchanged a look, remembering all too clearly their own experiences of Gibbs's displeasure.

'Anyway, I should get going. I told Evans to meet me in autopsy. Palmer has probably talked his ear off by now. Say hi to the girls for me. And tell Leigh I haven't forgotten that she wants me to show her how to pitch a curve ball. Next weekend, if nobody gets murdered.'

With that, Tony stepped into the elevator, leaving Tim with his box.


End file.
